Hocus-Pocus 101: Course Casts Its Spell Over Elite Students

LOS ANGELES—Last year, a curious letter arrived at the suburban home of a dark-haired boy with uncommon talents. The letter was from a group of veteran magicians, and it said the young teen had been chosen for admission into an elite magic academy.

"I was ecstatic," Evan Alberto, 14 years old, recalls.

Evan doesn't live in a space under the stairs, and his parents never had to protect him from a powerful wizard. (Though they do drive him to a lot of baseball games.)

Forget Harry Potter and Hogwarts. Hollywood is home to a very real Academy of Magical Arts, where a small class of handpicked, promising young magicians gathers each month for years of intensive magical study and training in a lavish, enchanted castle.

"I've learned so much here," says Evan, fanning one-dollar bills and flipping them to transform them into twenties, in a velvet-curtained room where magic school was recently in session.

Hollywood's Real Hogwarts

The Magic Castle is home to the Academy of Magical Arts in Hollywood. Dan Krauss for The Wall Street Journal

There's no Quidditch team, but there are "professors"—professional and retired magicians who mentor and critique the "juniors," as the students are called, and even share some of their secrets.

The academy is housed in L.A.'s Magic Castle, a private club set in a sprawling, cream-colored chateau-style mansion at the base of the Hollywood Hills.

To enter, visitors must know the magic word to open a hidden door in the lobby. Once inside, the Castle is a maze of hallways, stages and bars rigged with sound effects and moving chairs, and crammed with magic memorabilia, like a trick pool table that belonged to W.C. Fields. Mr. Fields's grandson is a member of the Castle.

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Students do homework in a library stocked with volumes on magic, including a book on white magic from 18th-century France, and books with notes handwritten in the margins by Harry Houdini.

"Don't make me laugh," reads a note Houdini scrawled near a passage about ghostly apparitions in a 1919 book entitled "Spiritualism."

The Castle, founded 50 years ago by a pair of magic-loving brothers, has long been a magnet for celebrities who dabbled in illusion, or were drawn to the Castle's eclectic collection of revered magicians and enthusiasts who hung out and performed there.

"It always makes me happy in a P.T. Barnum kind of way to see people just gobsmacked by trickery," says actor Neil Patrick Harris, president of the Academy's board of directors, and a former junior. A lifelong love of magic compelled Mr. Harris, an Emmy-winning actor, to spend time at the Castle assisting his friend and magician, Ed Alonzo, backstage. And "once I played his arms in an illusion."

Johnny Depp has visited the Houdini Seance Room, Castle officials say, a private chamber off the main dining area decorated with handcuffs that belonged to Houdini. A representative for Mr. Depp didn't return calls for comment.

Johnny Carson, Tony Curtis and Cary Grant were members, according to Castle officials. Mr. Grant, who was on the Castle's board, championed the creation of the young-magicians program nearly 40 years ago.

"Cary grabbed my hand and said 'Come with me, Diana,' and dragged me into the board meeting" recalls Diana Zimmerman, in her best Cary Grant voice. Ms. Zimmerman, a magician who also designed illusions for others, made a pitch to start a youth program, then left while the board decided. A few minutes later, "Cary comes running out and says "Diana, Diana, they're going to let you do it,' " Ms. Zimmerman recalls.

Since then, around 3,000 young magicians have gone through the program, and some are professional magicians.

The academy accepts students aged 13 to 20. It doesn't advertise, and admits only students who pass an audition in front of a panel of accomplished magicians. About 50 young magicians audition for a spot each year; about a third are accepted.

Once they are in, students are expected to attend monthly sessions on Saturdays that can last five or six hours. If they miss four sessions, they can be expelled. The cost: $45 a year.

"They have to be serious about it," says Robert Dorian, a mostly retired mentalist who runs the program. Professional magicians, including Teller—the less-voluble half of Penn and Teller—have lectured. Students who are good enough are allowed to perform at the Castle for members and their guests who come to brunch.

For his academy audition when he was 16 or 17, Mr. Harris, the actor, performed a trick that made squishy red balls multiply. He didn't stay in the program long, because of the increasing demands of his acting career. Mr. Harris starred in the "Doogie Howser" television show. "I got in, then I realized how intense it was," Mr. Harris says, referring to the juniors magic program.

Magician mentors teach students to refine their techniques and presentations. "Your bow is part of the act, as important as a trick you're doing," Ms. Zimmerman advised a junior who made doves appear out of the air, followed by a weak bow, during a recent academy session at the Castle.

Later, Ben Altman, a 17-year-old junior, cut open a whole lemon and pulled out a rolled-up $20 bill signed earlier by an audience member, awing his fellow students. Afterward, Ms. Zimmerman advised him to have a "dry $20" ready for the audience member so the person won't have to carry home a sticky bill.

The day's lecturer, Matt Marcy, a former student who now performs on cruise ships, dissected a crowd-pleasing illusion in which audience members secretly choose a crayon color, a number and a country. Mr. Marcy wrote the correct answers on pieces of paper—orchid, 198, France—and tossed them into the audience to "oohs" and "aahs." He then revealed the trick to the juniors.

He advised students to use simple props that can easily be "reset" for the next show. "Talk to a dove guy here about reset," he said, to laughter and knowing nods.

The Castle aims to teach juniors a kind of magic that never appeared on a Hogwarts syllabus: how to get jobs and make money. Mr. Marcy urged them to "do every show you can. This is a tough business. You're not a magician. You're a businessman."

"This is powerful magic he is showing you," Ms. Zimmerman said. "The stuff that gets you the money."

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